2026 Ecom Predictions With Ezra Firestone: The Strategies Smart Brands Will Follow

Home » Podcasts » 2026 Ecom Predictions With Ezra Firestone: The Strategies Smart Brands Will Follow

2026 Ecom Predictions With Ezra Firestone: The Strategies Smart Brands Will Follow

Ezra is the founder of BOOM! by Cindy Joseph, a multimillion-dollar DTC beauty brand built on authenticity and emotional storytelling. He’s also the founder of Smart Marketer, where he’s helped thousands of entrepreneurs grow their online businesses, and Zipify Apps, a suite of tools that help Shopify brands boost conversions and lifetime value.

Ezra has built multiple 7-, 8-, and even 9-figure brands, and he’s a true pioneer in teaching how to grow not just through great products — but through great customer relationships.

Highlight Bullets

> Here’s a glimpse of what you would learn….
  • Importance of product promise and quality in e-commerce success.
  • Strategies for increasing repeat business and customer retention.
  • Evolution of e-commerce marketing channels and targeting methods.
  • Impact of large language models (LLMs) on future consumer engagement and advertising.
  • Necessity of optimizing key acquisition channels: Google, Facebook, and Amazon.
  • Role of content creation and influencer marketing in brand visibility.
  • Challenges and opportunities presented by platforms like Amazon and social commerce.
  • Importance of continuous product development and innovation.
  • Strategies for effective use of AI tools in content production and marketing.
  • Need for a holistic approach combining product quality, marketing, and customer engagement.

In this episode of the Ecomm Breakthrough Podcast, host Josh Hadley interviews e-commerce veteran Ezra Firestone. Ezra shares actionable strategies for scaling brands in a rapidly evolving digital landscape, emphasizing continuous product innovation, optimizing key channels (Amazon, Facebook, Google), and leveraging influencer and AI-driven content. The discussion covers the shift toward AI-powered discovery, the importance of creative ad systems, and practical retention tactics. Ezra also highlights the value of community-building, mentorship, and adapting to new technologies, offering listeners a roadmap to future-proof their e-commerce businesses.
Here are the 3 action items that Josh identified from this episode:
  1. Overhaul Your Creative Production System
    Scale up video content dramatically through brand ambassadors, micro-influencers, and paid creators. Use AI tools (like Vo3 and 11 Labs) to multiply content variations. Aim for 60-70% of paid ads to use whitelisted content from creators for 30-40% lower CPMs.
  2. Launch Products Consistently
    Implement the “new and fancy” technique—create updated versions of your bestsellers. Target 2-4 product launches per year. Add basket builders (high-margin accessories) and test multiple size variants. Default product pages to your highest-priced variant to increase average order value.
  3. Optimize the Big Three Channels
    Focus 90% of acquisition energy on Amazon, Google, and Facebook. Fill out complete product data in Shopify’s backend for LLM readiness. Activate Shop App campaigns and optimize all social commerce channels (Instagram Shop, TikTok Shop) even if they’re currently small revenue sources.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
Special Mention(s):
Related Episode(s):

Episode Sponsor
This episode is brought to you by eComm Breakthrough Consulting where I help seven-figure e-commerce owners grow to eight figures.
I started Hadley Designs in 2015 and grew it to an eight-figure brand in seven years.
I made mistakes along the way that made the path to eight figures longer. At times I doubted whether our business could even survive and become a real brand. I wish I would have had a guide to help me grow faster and avoid the stumbling blocks.
If you’ve hit a plateau and want to know the next steps to take your business to the next level, then go to www.EcommBreakthrough.com (that’s Ecomm with two M’s) to learn more.
Transcript Area
Ezra Firestone 00:00:00  The best product doesn’t win in the marketplace. The best promise does. But your product has to live up to the promise that you make, right? Whoever makes the best promise wins the sale. But unfortunately, an e-commerce one sale ain’t enough. You need a repeat business. You need about half your half your revenue coming from repeat business. So if you don’t have upsells or cross sales and if the product that you sell sold in the first part isn’t, delivering upon isn’t good enough, doesn’t have to be the best. It has to be good enough. then you’re in trouble, and you should always be making your product better. And one of the best product development, strategies is what I call the new and fancy technique. And I use this in all my businesses, and it’s, like, the best. It’s like, what are they actually already buying from you? And then can you come out with a newer, fancier version of that?
Intro 00:00:47  Welcome to the Ecomm Breakthrough podcast. Are you ready to unlock the full potential and growth in your business? You’ve already crossed seven figures in sales, but the challenge is knowing how to take your business to the next level.
Josh Hadley 00:01:01  Welcome to the Ecomm Breakthrough Podcast. I’m your host, Josh Hadley. I scaled my own brand from 0 to 8 figures in sales, and now my mission is to take it to over nine figures on my journey to nine figures, I bring you unfiltered conversations from the smartest minds in e-commerce. Past guests include Kevin King, Aaron Cordovez and Michael E Gerber, author of The Myth. Today’s guest needs no introduction, but because we are about to have a bio for him, I’m going to introduce my one of the OGs in the e-commerce space, Ezra Firestone. Ezra is one of the most respected operators in e-commerce. He is the founder of Smart Marketer, co-founder of Boom by Cindy Joseph, and a long time practitioner who actually builds and scales brands, not just talks about it. He has driven hundreds of millions of dollars in online sales. He’s built teams, he’s survived platform shifts, and he’s stayed profitable while doing it. He is especially sharp when it comes to direct response retention, email and SMS marketing, and building real asset value instead of just chasing short term hacks.
Josh Hadley 00:02:08  What I respect the most about Ezra is that his advice comes from running businesses with his own money on the line. He understands the difference between vanity growth and durable profit. So with that introduction, welcome to the show, Ezra.
Ezra Firestone 00:02:22  Hey man, happy to be here. Thanks for making me sound so fancy.
Josh Hadley 00:02:26  Well, doesn’t I don’t have to make you sound fancy when you already are fancy, Ezra.
Ezra Firestone 00:02:32  Have I have been in the game? I’ll give you that much, man. I’ve been. I’ve been out here doing it now for about 20 years. and, yeah, it’s a wonderful thing. And, you know, the crazy part about e-commerce is not much has changed, man. Like, yes. Okay. The traffic sources have changed. And, you know, the ability to get products developed has changed. But fundamentally the game is the same.
Josh Hadley 00:02:57  Yeah. True. Right. And I think that’s what we’ll dive into today with 2026 and beyond. What is e-commerce? What is the e-commerce landscape look like.
Josh Hadley 00:03:08  And so I love that you’ve been in the industry for 20 years to see how things have. They’ve dramatically shifted in terms of platforms and channels that we’re utilizing. But you are one of the most requested guests, definitely. As I ask the final question to every guest, who is somebody that you admire or respect the most in the e-commerce space, your name continues to come up and it’s a pleasure having you on the show.
Ezra Firestone 00:03:32  The core things that are shifting are the visibility sources, right? When I got into the game, it was search, find, buy. That was it. It was only search traffic. You, if you wanted to get visibility for your brand, it was search engine optimization. It was ranking on Google, Yahoo, and Bing, and it was paying for ads on Google AdWords. And that was it, man. That was kind of all you had. There was such thing as contextual targeting, but it was a single data point, contextual targeting. So it was basically like, what we now know as the Google Display network.
Ezra Firestone 00:04:03  But it was like you knew somebody was on a website about cats. That’s all you knew about them. So you could serve an ad about cats round about 2012, 2013, really. You know, by 2014, 15, 16, it was popping came this thing called multi data point contextual targeting, which Facebook really pioneered. And then Google obviously adopted and other other brands where it was like all of a sudden you had more than one data point on somebody. You knew how old they were, you knew what gender they were. You knew what they had purchased recently, you knew what they were interested in. And multi data point contextual targeting gave rise to brands that didn’t have a ton of search volume. Like my biggest success that I built myself as a brand called Boom Beauty. And we were the first pro age cosmetic line, right? Like everyone was anti-aging anti-wrinkle. And we came out with a different idea about how to speak to that consumer in a different sort of viewpoint on what aging is, but nobody was searching for it.
Ezra Firestone 00:04:58  So until multi data point contextual targeting, there was no way for us to break through. And so then you had all these these platforms, you had Pinterest, you had of course, you still had search find by right. Amazon rose in that time frame as well. I mean, 2013 I started an Amazon business in 2013 that I still run today. It’s an eight figure Amazon brand. So it’s like search fine by is doing fine. It’s a great business model. But contextual targeting really sort of elevated paid advertising and the ability to scale brands. What we have in 26 coming is a new kind of of what I, what I believe a new visibility model for brands, which is not ranking an LMS because LMS are like, you know, ChatGPT perplexity. Right? Like AI, humans engaging with AI as, as a way to get information, not just social media and being served videos and watching their friends and following people that they’re inspired by and their algorithmic feeds, and not just searching for things, but actually engaging in conversation that is unique to them, where this sort of like, machine learning, they people call it AI, but it’s not AI, it’s machine learning.
Ezra Firestone 00:06:08  It’s a machine learning algorithm that is processing a bunch of data and then cross-referencing that and then delivering information based on that. But basically what’s interesting about this is each individual user will have a super even more because you have a curated feed now on your social platforms, right? Facebook and Instagram and YouTube and, you know, TikTok and any of these platforms that you engage with, they’re tracking everything that you do. And what they’re trying to do is keep you on their platform. Because the interesting thing about capitalism right now is whoever has the attention wins. So what these algorithms have figured out is that if they can piss you off and scare you, they can keep you on the platform. And so that’s kind of like a lot of what’s out there, is designed to get you mad or freak you out, because that’s what keeps you engaged. And or it’s designed to. Like when I go on my Instagram, it’s like jiu jitsu, weightlifting, Hawaii, surfing, bonsai trees, sumo wrestling is like, they know that is the shit that I am interested in and that if they serve that up to me, I’m going to stay longer.
Ezra Firestone 00:07:14  I’m going to consume more, I’m going to click more ads. They’re going to make more money off of me. And what’s interesting about these llms is like, not only are they buying the data to see who you are and what you’re interested in, but they have all the information that you feed it and and people are feeding it a ton of information like, hey, I’m having an argument with my spouse. This is what happened, what do I do? And I like, you know, hey, I’m, writing a birthday card to my best friend. Here’s our relationship. Here’s some things I want to say. Make it better for me. Like, all, like, detailed information about you or. Hey, I want to, you know, redesign my desk. I, you know, I do this job. Here’s the things I need. This is what I’m most interested in. And I’ve checked out these products. What do you think is best? Like, give me an idea. You know, for a whole desk setup.
Ezra Firestone 00:07:58  Like, it’s got all this information. And I think really, what makes this awesome for brands is they’re going to open up advertising and these llms specifically. ChatGPT is the fastest growing, let’s call it app. It’s kind of like more than an app, but let’s just call it an app for now. Ever in the history of the internet, that’s the. The faster in growth than users than Facebook, faster and growth in users than WhatsApp. Faster in growth than users than, TikTok like the fastest ever to go to a billion users or whatever. They’re at 800 million. I got to go look at the data. But, so so what the way they’re going to monetize, I mean, they’re they’re just losing money hand over fist at the moment, even though they are, their theoretical valuation is what is propping up the US economy, which is something else we can talk about in a second, but they will monetize it through paid advertising, and brands will get to leverage this paid advertising. And those of us who are early adopters of that will do very well.
Ezra Firestone 00:08:56  And the cool thing too is, I came up with this, concept called integrated social commerce. Back in 2014, I said, hey, there’s going to be there’s two waves that are coming to how we consume the digital medium. One is wearable technology. I predict the first mass market wearable technology where you will engage with the digital medium will be in 2015. Well, I was I was wrong. It was much later. You know, there was Google Glass which had already come out, which is why I was like, oh, this is where we’re going. But everybody hated them. They called them glass holes. You know, it was just like it didn’t work. But then the Apple iWatch and like, 2018, 2019 kind of was like the first mass market wearable. Now, of course you have the Facebook. You know, you have the Apple Vision Pro, you have the Facebook meta glasses. But like wearable technology and engagement with the digital medium where you are speaking to it, so you know.
Ezra Firestone 00:09:49  Hey, meta. Hey, Google. And then, augmented reality where the digital medium is actually overlaid over your world. Right. So, like, hey, I’m interested in this. Hey, what’s that person wearing? And it pulls it up and you’ll be able to buy it right from this augmented reality interface. So that’s like a few years out because the glasses aren’t quite good enough. But but, audio engagement with the digital medium and wearable technology, augmented reality overlay engagement with the digital medium are big, future ways that, like brands are going to sell to consumers. But ChatGPT being sort of like the most interactive. And the other one’s way in which we have given information to an app and let the information get back to us. Shopify has now integrated to that, and you can buy right from in these LMS. And when I when I said integrated social commerce, what I meant was you’re going to be able to run an ad on Facebook. This was back in 20 1415 and by right from that ad and then I had the pleasure of of supporting Facebook and building out what we now know as Facebook shops.
Ezra Firestone 00:10:53  So it came right. It came in the form of TikTok shop, Facebook shop, meta, meta shop, sorry, Instagram shop, etc.. So it didn’t quite work out in the way I thought, the way I thought it was going to work out was like you would just purchase from within an actual ad unit, but but the, the, the, the combining of the search layer and the commerce layer, it’s like already got one step closer. It used to be, you know, you had to search for it. You had to go to their website. Amazon kind of brought this together where it was like all the search and all the commerce happened in one app. And this is what Shopify wants. This is what the shop app is all about. We can talk about the shop app because everybody should really be on that. And it’s really interesting. So bring me back to the shop app in a minute and then I’ll stop. But basically the thing that’s happening in e-commerce is search and interest and engagement.
Ezra Firestone 00:11:41  And then actual commerce used to be like step step, step step by step and they’re squishing together, which actually isn’t that wonderful for brands because like, what we want is to own the customer data. and as the commerce layer and the interest layer get closer and closer together. we don’t we own less and less of that data. Right. You don’t own any of the data on Amazon. You’re not. And the the the more that the commerce happens, not on your site, the less data you’re going to own, the more that the person processing the data, which is Shopify, which is a whole big thing, is going to own. But it’s a really interesting thing because basically it means that our sales funnels are going to change a little bit. And what’s going to be most useful to brands is actually going to be content and storytelling and then quality of product and less so, you know, your website’s kind of going away in a sense. Right. It’s like the website will be considered will be right now probably 60 to 80% of of well, actually, if you give a normal brand, it’s probably 60% of their traffic.
Ezra Firestone 00:12:43  Their sales are happening on their website, with 40% happening on Amazon. When you’re at scale. You know, because Amazon’s kind of 40 to 50% of all e-commerce at this point, they’re eating up commerce. So of the 60% of your of your sales that are happening on your website, if your total sales, you know, let’s call it 10% are happening on social shops, if you’re really scaled, if you’re on Facebook shop, Instagram shop, TikTok shop, you know, shop app. But it’s for most brands, it’s probably more like 3 to 5%. That number is going to grow and it’s going to grow considerably. And so optimizing all the different areas where people are the ChatGPT commerce layer and ads, the Instagram and Facebook commerce layer and ads, all that stuff is going to be more and more of a thing to the point where your actual website is going to diminish over the next ten years in the amount of volume. It’ll still have a website, but it won’t be getting the kind of engagement it gets now.
Josh Hadley 00:13:33  Ezra, I love those predictions of what’s coming down the pipe for, e-commerce. And I would really, truly agree with you that the compression of going from search to purchase is just getting condensed very, very quickly. And I think that open AI. I do believe that my prediction is in 2026, like in advertising platform, their comp is rolled out and I think it is going to be an arbitrage opportunity. I think that we know that Facebook had a really good like identifying pixel data, and they really got to know you personally. I think like ChatGPT knows you a hundred times better than Facebook knows you at this point, because you’re having those more intimate conversations than you would otherwise on even Google or definitely on Facebook and what you’re browsing just on the internet. So I’m very interested in that. And here’s the other prediction that I have. Ezra, I think that OpenAI already announced that they will have integrations with Shopify and allow like that click to purchase and how you can merchandise your product there. That’s great.
Josh Hadley 00:14:45  Well, it’ll be interesting to see how that all shapes up. But what’s interesting is like for the past decade, almost two, Amazon has been the king, right? Amazon is just like, who’s ever going to be able to knock off Amazon? They’ve got the one day fulfillment two day fulfillment promises right. That’s like whoever’s going to be able to dethrone them has to have a good, you know, fulfillment structure. And I think that maybe there is a shot here where e-commerce as a whole May begins to transition into a more ubiquitous like it’s it’s social commerce involved with this, like LM model, where it’s just kind of part of your natural daily movement. And again, the wearable devices, we know Jonny IV is working with, OpenAI to come out with a wearable device. So what impact does that have? But suffice it to say, when all of these things come to fruition. Seems like every decade there becomes an arbitrage opportunity where it’s first mover advantage. And when Facebook first came out with their ads, it was an arbitrage opportunity for the people that acted quickly.
Josh Hadley 00:16:00  I mean, that’s what Alex Hermosa attributes his success to arbitrage opportunity on basically printing money with more money. He fed meta the more money he got out of that Facebook funnel. So I believe that there will be another arbitrage arbitrage opportunity that happens here within the LLM, AI space. So, Ezra, there’s so much that we can dive into from here, but I want to almost like, pull it back just a hot minute to say. All right. Great. We’ve got lots of predictions, lots of exciting things that could or should happen in the e-commerce space. So what should brand owners do today beginning 2026? What action items would you recommend? Like, hey, all this cool fancy stuff may be happening, but here’s what I would start doing now so that you are ready when and if these cool things do come to pass.
Ezra Firestone 00:16:52  Well, I.
Outro 00:16:52  Think you should optimize.
Ezra Firestone 00:16:53  Every current channel. So the shop app, right? It’s probably 1 to 2% of your total revenue, but people aren’t optimizing it.
Ezra Firestone 00:17:01  They’re not running their sales in there. They don’t have it fully built out. They don’t have the shop app campaigns turned on inside of Shopify. Optimize that, optimize your social shops and run, you know, advantage plus that people can shop in there. so just get all that set up, have your full product catalog filled out in the back end of Shopify, every piece of identifiable information about your product, so that when Shopify is sending the data about products to LMS, you don’t have any data missing. If you have any data missing, you’re going to be discounted. Now, of course, for sort of ranking inside of LMS, the more established brands that have more content signals more organic traffic, more reviews. Those ones are going to get the higher rankings to start. Get all your ducks in a row. Get everything optimized. Number one. Number two. Unfortunately or fortunately, if you look at e-commerce brands today, its Google or its Facebook, pretty much, hey, there’s a few of these freaking TikTok shop companies that are out there selling.
Ezra Firestone 00:17:59  You know, the thing about TikTok shop is you got to be selling something like $50 or under because the when when TikTok first rolled out the shop, they subsidized everything by like 30 or 40%. They put billions of dollars into subsidizing the commerce on their to get the commerce engine started. And it’s a younger demo, so cheaper products work well. But like for most brands, TikTok sub 5% of their total revenue, if that. So I don’t think that’s going to be it. It’s like Amazon, Facebook, Google. Those are the three things that are driving your business. I’m sorry. That’s just the way it is. You might have somehow you’re getting some PR or somehow you’re getting some organic search or somehow you’ve got a really wonderful affiliate, strategy where you’ve got affiliates promoting you, but probably not. Probably not. That’s one out of 100 brands that has one of those other three that’s. Actually working for them, 99 out of 100 of us. It’s for me. Every one of my brands and I have do hundreds of millions of revenue per year.
Ezra Firestone 00:18:53  Now, of course, these are not all brands I’ve built. I have several brands that I’ve built that were doing well, but now I’ve bought brands and I’m a part of a private equity company and we purchase things. And so but you look across most brands and it’s going to be those three. So how optimized are those three channels? How optimized is your Google? How optimizes your Facebook? How optimizes your Amazon. There’s more you could be doing. There’s a saying in the American South, starve your ponies and feed your stallions. Well, Amazon, Google and Facebook are your stallions. Drop 90% of your energy should go into feeding those acquisition engines. Now, of course, you have to do everything else. You have to do your your email marketing and SMS marketing. You have to do your really, really good content marketing and engagement and content production and community engagement and social. You have to do the optimization of your sales process, your sales pages and product pages and all that jazz. You have to do your average order value optimization.
Ezra Firestone 00:19:44  You have to be continually making better products and launching products and creating bundles and doing upselling and cross-selling. So it’s like assuming you’re doing all the fundamentals, then what is there to do? Well, there’s the marketing side of it. And those three channels I think are under optimized for most brands, like Facebook, for example, with this Andromeda update, it’s like you need way more creative if you are not, redesigning your ad creative system and process for your brand going into 2026, you’re going to fall behind. You need a lot more freaking content than you used to write, which means you need an ambassador program where you’re getting videos from your ambassadors. You need an influencer program where you’re out there paying. So with influencer, it’s interesting because there’s actual influencers who have influence over people don’t you don’t need them. Okay, maybe if you’re a big brand, you got lots of money, you’re using them, but you’re probably not a big brand. You’re if you’re if you’re eight figures and under, you’re probably not using influencers.
Ezra Firestone 00:20:37  Then there’s micro influencers who are people who have small followings. Let’s call it under 100,000, who don’t have that much influence over people, but know how to make wonderful videos and can post them. And then you can get whitelisted, you can use their content that they’re giving you, and you can get whitelisted to their handle, which, by the way, if you’re whitelisting ads, those CPMs for the ads that are coming from whitelisted accounts are like 30 to 40% cheaper. So you should be doing this with 60 or 70% of your paid ads. you can whitelist them and you can use their fan page to run ads, and you can get really good content from them. And then there’s paid creators. 90% of your influencer budget should be going to paid creators and micro influencers. So so you so you have brand ambassadors, which are your customers who you’re incentivizing to make videos for you by following up with them and incentivizing them to do so. Everyone who buys from you, you got paid creators, you got micro influencers, and you got macro influencers who you’re probably not using.
Ezra Firestone 00:21:29  Then you have the AI overlay on top of that and the AI overlay on top of that. What that allows you to do is allows you to take a video that you get from an influencer, and the videos that you get from these influencers. Remember when I say influencer, I’m talking about paid creators who don’t have followings but are awesome and know how to make videos. You can get them from brand, tools like social Cat and, you know, Maverick and things like that. you have those ones and then you have micro influencers. You’re pounding the pavement, you’re going out there and finding them. You’re the content you get is as good as the brief that you give them. Are you giving them hooks? Are you giving them angles? Are you giving them things to say? Are you telling them exactly how you want to open exactly what you want in the middle, exactly how you want it to close? Are you getting them to record three, 4 or 5 different opening hooks? Like you got to get good at that and then you use AI to, you know, we use I think Geo three Vo three.
Ezra Firestone 00:22:14  I think it just changed its name to something else. We use 11 labs where you can, create visuals like, like for example, you can have them I have them now do like just their face. And then we’ll do visuals in the back via AI. or we’ll do like a new opening hook with a voiceover, and it’s just B-roll from them. So you can stitch all these B-roll together. So video editing, audio editing, which AI is getting really good at, by the way, and, influencer and ambassador. and then of course, your own in-house production. I have my team making videos now. My teams like recording videos, talking about our products and stuff like that. So the, the key thing with, with paid social, which is what probably is driving most of your, your, your, your, your followers brands is the sheer volume that is needed is way more than it used to be. It used to be that, you know, paid advertising on social was about like interest targeting and campaign structure and things like that.
Ezra Firestone 00:23:07  And it’s like creative was an element. And now creative is probably 90% of the ball game. and so you have to get. Yeah. If I was doing one thing as a brand, I’d be overhauling my creative production system in order to be able to compete for paid ads. And then I’d also be, doubling and tripling and quadrupling down on Amazon, optimizing all my listings, going out and getting reviews, launch a new product, running ads, do an Amazon Creator network getting videos out there. Amazon Vine, which you can only do once you launch a product, but I’d be really heavily investing in Amazon.
Josh Hadley 00:23:43  I love it. I think one of the cool things as you do that, Ezra, especially as you’re working with like those affiliates or micro influencers, you’re also sending really good signals out there, especially if somebody is posting onto, YouTube or even on YouTube. Look. Right. Guess what? Like the LMS are crawling YouTube. So if it’s mentioning your brand name and you’re getting a lot of volume out there, guess what? Like that is helping you stage yourself for the future wherever these LMS take us.
Josh Hadley 00:24:17  Like you’re now putting content out into the world. I truly do believe this is my prediction. The people that are just about arbitrage, the clicks and the keywords. I think those businesses really struggle over the next 3 to 5 years. That’s essentially what everybody built their business on in Amazon when they did the the, you know, the what was it, the million dollar like? I can’t remember the name of the the big company.
Ezra Firestone 00:24:45  Amazing selling machine.
Josh Hadley 00:24:46  Amazing selling machine. Why am I I couldn’t forget that. It’s very obvious with AI with amazing selling machine, it was find a spatula, put your brand name on it. Look and see. There’s just not many listings on here. Look how cheap the ads are. And ads weren’t even a thing than at the time either. But it was just like you could just find keyword volume, find underserved audiences, and you arbitrage to existing demand that was already there. I think what this is going to do, we’re now going into a much more competitive space where long gone are the easy arbitrage of just demand capture.
Josh Hadley 00:25:22  And it’s all about demand generation. So I believe the people who win in the long run over the next 5 to 10 years, no matter what happens with AI, no matter what happens with the shopping platforms, the brands that win are going to be those that are putting out content into the world. They’re raising brand awareness, they’re working with affiliates, they’re creating their own content as well. But what sits behind all of that good content is a really, really good product, which is what you talked about.
Ezra Firestone 00:25:53  Yeah, I mean.
Josh Hadley 00:25:54  I think if you have that, that’s when the flywheel I think starts going.
Ezra Firestone 00:25:58  The best product doesn’t win in the marketplace. The best promise does. But your product has to live up to the promise that you make, right? Whoever makes the best promise wins the sale. But unfortunately, an e-commerce one sale ain’t enough. You need a repeat business. You need about half your half your revenue coming from repeat business. So if you don’t have upsells or cross sales and if the product that you sell sold in the first part isn’t, delivering upon isn’t good enough, doesn’t have to be the best.
Ezra Firestone 00:26:22  It has to be good enough. then you’re in trouble, and you should always be making your product better. And one of the best product development strategies is what I call the new and fancy technique. And I use this in all my businesses and it’s like the best. It’s like, what are they actually already buying from you? And then can you come out with a newer, fancier version of that? I belong to a very prestigious community known as the Cold Plunge Bros. Which isn’t a real thing, but on Twitter, it’s like if you’re a guy with a cold plunge, you’re officially a cold plunge, bro. And everybody hates this group of people for some reason. But, pardon my language, but I have this cold plunge. And, you know, I wrestled in high school, and we would get in these tubs of ice after wrestling practice, and I always, you know, thought it’d be a cool thing to have a sauna because you would cut weight in the sauna and then a tub of ice.
Ezra Firestone 00:27:05  And by the time I had enough money to buy a sauna, they also had automated tubs of ice. This company, Morosco Ford, just was like maybe six years ago now I bought one. It was kind of early in the cold plunge industry and, it’s great. You know, it’s I mean, it’s actually my acupuncturist is is against it. So the Chinese medicine says, do not get cold. It’s a whole separate thing. But anyhow, I bought this thing and then a couple of years later they were like, hey, guess what? We have a new version of this and it is quieter. And it does, but it’s like at the end of the day, it is a giant thing that fills a tub with water and keeps it cold. It’s the same product. They’re like, you send the one that you have back and we’ll pay you for it, and you pay the difference and this and that. And it’s like, I went for this because it was I was like, oh, I need the quieter one, I need the colder one, but it’s the same product.
Ezra Firestone 00:27:50  And so I do this with all my, you know, I also was a big buyer. And when I lived in New York City for ten years of electric skateboards, and every year there was a newer, fancier version of the same thing, and then I would sell the old one or give the old one away, and I’d buy the new one. And so, I look for, can I make my packaging more sustainable? Can I look at the reviews and see what people don’t like about it, and make a second version that’s slightly different, like waterproof versus not waterproof or whatever? and new and fancy is a really wonderful way to do to hack product development. Additional sizes. This is a quick little tip for you guys if you have three sizes of a product, guess what every brand does when you land on the landing page? Do you know what variant they default to? They default to the cheapest variant, the two ounce, for example. Well, I switched it. I was like, what if I defaulted to the eight ounce variant when they landed on my page? And the eight ounce variants, $54 to two ounce variant is $28, and then I have a four ounce variant for like 40 bucks.
Ezra Firestone 00:28:45  44 I got 30% more purchases of my eight ounce variant by simply defaulting to that selection when you land on the landing page. So, bigger sizes of the same skew or different sizes of the same skew is a really wonderful way to diversify your product lineup. You can modify your packaging, you can get more sustainable packaging, you can bundle and add it to a bundle or a kit and upsell and cross all that bundle or kit. On the PDP, there’s a lot different things you can do, but you got to be doing product development and you should aim for 2 to 4 launches a year. you know, in any given brand. Now, of course, with product development, there’s also the concept of basket builders. Be familiar with that. So basket builders are the idea behind a basket builder is like it’s a product that’s really easy to produce, that has high profit margin, that goes with any other product. So for example, I sell, hair dye and you need gloves. And so that doesn’t get on your hands and you need that little bowl to mix it in.
Ezra Firestone 00:29:40  So we have this little kit. It’s like a bowl. It’s gloves. It’s a cape. And it’s very it’s just white label stuff. But you do need it for our products and it’s nice stuff. And we upsell and cross sell that, you know, in pre-purchase upsells at the cart and post-purchase. And it’s like it’s a $32 little bundle where my margin is like 90%. So you can do basket builders as well. I’m kind of rambling, but yeah, product is really important.
Josh Hadley 00:30:05  No, I love that, so many little hacks that you just shared in there. Like I hope everybody actually paid attention. Massive value. when it comes to, like, what you default to just on that landing page, if you have different variants, default to the highest paying Variant and.
Ezra Firestone 00:30:23  Tested at least. I mean, I’m not saying. Yeah, necessarily you’re going to get a 30% uptick. We did. But you know test it.
Josh Hadley 00:30:31  Test test test test. I love those strategies. So, Ezra, as we begin to wrap things up, here are the three action items that I’ve noted so far.
Josh Hadley 00:30:43  You let me know if I’m missing something and how our brand owners can apply these into their business to start this next year off on the right foot. So, number one, piggybacking off of our most recent conversation, which is it’s all about new product development. Here’s what I think most brand owners kind of get complacent in, to be honest with you. They think especially if they launch their their brand on Amazon, it is a well, I launched my product and now I got it ranked well. And now it’s just going to sit there and I’m going to chill on the beach and just ride off into the sunset because I’m ranked however, the best businesses to look at is go look at the apples of the world. Go look at the big legacy auto manufacturers of the world. What do they do? Every year they come out with new versions of their product. Product development and product R&D is the lifeblood of Apple, even though. Has the iPhone really changed that much over the past decade? All right.
Josh Hadley 00:31:44  But even the auto manufacturers, has the car really changed from the 2025 to 2026 version? Debatable, right. But what are those things that you could do that added bells and whistles? they continue to come out with new products and they are willing to venture into completely new territories, even the EV of vehicles or the hybrids. Right. You see them branching out. So I think a core pillar of any brand owner strategy is you have existing products that you need to continue to refresh, and then you also have your kind of, hey, we’re we’re going to shoot into this brand new category, maybe a little bit more riskier, but like, we’re going to place some bets because we don’t know where the next big win is going to come from. But let’s put our feelers out there. And so product development, I truly believe, is the lifeblood of any business. And it is the number one metric that we track in our business to know whether we’re going to be growing, if we I know that we identified 20 new product opportunities.
Josh Hadley 00:32:45  I know that I’m going to have a better year next year. If that number decreases, I know I’m going to have a worse year just because those new products drive so much.
Ezra Firestone 00:32:53  So that hooks in the sea, baby. More fish hooks in the sea, the more.
Outro 00:32:57  Fish you catch.
Ezra Firestone 00:32:57  And especially on Amazon. My goal this year is to launch one product a month for my Amazon business. It’s a lotions and potions business. and specifically if you’re an Amazon brand, because I have both. I’m really bullish on Amazon. People hate Amazon as a business model, I love it. Look, do I agree? Do I do I from a capitalist? Sorry. From a consumer standpoint and as an individual love that there’s a big giant corporate conglomerate that’s driving prices into the ground, stealing all the marketplaces by figuring out what’s selling and launching their own things cheaper. That doesn’t have to be profitable. So it can be cheaper than everyone else, because it makes all this money with AWS, so it can drive all the other product developers out of business by being the cheapest and losing money on every purchase, and then writing that off from a tax.
Ezra Firestone 00:33:39  Like, I don’t think it’s a good thing, like systemically for our economy, but I also don’t feel like I have the ability to solve the issue of it being so easy for people to shop on Amazon, and having the one click purchase on there, and the fact that there’s 100 million users on Prime or just on Prime membership getting two day delivery, it’s like, hey, this is whether you agree with it or not. This is the way it is. Amazon is 40% or something like that, 43%. I’m gonna look at the actual data of all dollars spent in America and tell you what, man, it’s simpler than a traditional Shopify store because it’s your traffic source, your visibility source, and it’s your commerce engine, and it’s where all the customer support happens. I mean, it’s everything all in one. And you can really do a lot of volume there, and you just got to make sure that you’ve got enough margin. So you’re not selling cheap products on Amazon. Very difficult. I have a company, I sell soap on Amazon and it’s a small company.
Ezra Firestone 00:34:33  I bought it about a year and a half, maybe two years ago, for 50 grand. I think we’re doing, I don’t know, half a million a year in revenue now. It was doing it was doing about 50 when I bought it. So I’ve got it in two years. But it’s like, you know, each bar of soap is nine bucks. One thing I did was I started selling two packs at 16, so I took my average order value from 9 to 16. but after all the Amazon fees and stuff like that, I make a dollar or two a bar and it’s like, can I get that to a couple million dollars a year? Yeah, I will, I will, and am I happy to be in a grateful for any little business that I can run and have a CEO in place who’s operating it and make really wonderful products and get them out there. And it’s like, I’m so happy about it. And I’ll tell you what, it’s the same level of difficult as selling a 50 or $60 item where I make five or 10 or 15 bucks per, where I’ve got enough margin to really make some money.
Ezra Firestone 00:35:19  So I would I would encourage people to have a little bit higher priced product on Amazon, actually, which is sort of not the traditional idea with Amazon. but it’s what I found. Sorry, I don’t know, I interrupted, you.
Josh Hadley 00:35:32  Know, I love that that fantastic tangent and totally agree with getting products up there on Amazon. It’s a big miss, especially if you’re running Facebook ads. You’re you’re losing out on arguably at least 30 to 40% of sales of people just going straight to Amazon after they see your Facebook ad and buying some other brands product. So if you’re not on Amazon, get on Amazon. action item number two that I have is focus on your content strategy. If you don’t have one, get one. Whether that be you’re putting out your own content. Easier said than done or theoretically, getting yourself an affiliate army or an influencer army that is going out there, that is posting about your product, Talking about your product. Building out content and long tail keywords for those LMS to actually know who you are.
Josh Hadley 00:36:20  Because if you’re just hiding behind Amazon and Amazon alone, you I. I would argue you get smoked in the next five years. If you’re not doing anything else, then just arbitrage what’s existing on Amazon. my third and final action item here is focus on the big three. We talked about, hey, that, you know, you could find niche marketplaces, right? You could find that an up and coming thing. But really at the end of the day, where more money is going to be spent and where most of the e-commerce is going to happen is Google, Facebook and Amazon. So have dedicated strategies for each of those three channels and then optimize them. Once you feel like you’re you’ve maximized those optimization levers, then you can branch out into those new adventuresome endeavors, so to speak. So, Ezra, those are like my three action items here for our listeners. Is there anything else you would add to that?
Ezra Firestone 00:37:17  Yeah, I mean, I think the I think the content thing is, is even more so about keeping your consumers engaged, that when you do run sales, they’re they’re sort of excited to hear from you.
Ezra Firestone 00:37:27  And you’re not just sending sale emails every month. You’re sending like at least one piece of content a week. And then, yeah, cross posting all your influencer and ambassador content over to YouTube, YouTube shorts, all the all the different social channels, so you can get those signals so that you can be relevant for LMS. I think the LLM traffic to brands is actually not going to be huge in 2026 until ads I think adds, yes, I think just organic. It’s going to go to the big brands and not not going to filter down to us little or guys probably to start, I think over time we’ll start to understand what they’re calling GMO, which is basically the organic rankings within these, you know, AI apps. And I think over the next couple of years, it’ll become a much more important part of the traffic mix for small brands. And then. I don’t know if you mentioned this, but obviously overhauling your, creative infrastructure so that you’re able to produce a lot more ad concepts and not just videos, image ads and GIF ads as well.
Josh Hadley 00:38:24  Yeah. Totally agree. Facebook needs more ads. TikTok needs more ad volume. More volume is the game. Ezra, as we wrap things up here, three final questions. Number one, what’s been the most influential book that you’ve read and why?
Ezra Firestone 00:38:40  I like Stone soup, which is a children’s book about some Revolutionary War cats who come into a town and don’t have anything, and they put a pot of water on in the center of town and throw some stones in it, and someone walks by is like, what are you guys doing? Oh, we’re making soup for the town, man. Oh, great. I’ll bring buy some carrots and then next person comes by. Hey, man, what are you guys up to? I’m. We’re making soup for the town, man. And I got some potatoes, and they basically start with nothing other than enthusiasm and interest and, you know, invitation. And they end up with, like, a really wonderful soup and a big party and a bunch of friends, and it’s like you could be the catalyst for creating community.
Ezra Firestone 00:39:13  You could bring a group of people together and leverage and, you know, be the bartender at the party, so to speak, and kind of like, I think that’s really valuable lesson in life that if you can coalesce a group of people and treat them well and provide a good time, you’ll do well. The same thing goes with your team and team building.
Josh Hadley 00:39:32  I love that that’s a fantastic book recommendation. First time I’ve heard it, but I love the principle that you just shared there.
Ezra Firestone 00:39:39  It’s like a book from 50 years ago. I’m gonna have to look up when it was published. I don’t know if they even read it anymore.
Josh Hadley 00:39:44  I love it. Question number two what’s your favorite AI tool that you’ve been using?
Ezra Firestone 00:39:50  I mean, probably just GPT. My, my team uses a bunch of different stuff. I’m not actually in the weeds of executing pretty much anything these days, but I know we’re using a group of AI tools in our content production. I like I was saying, I think the main video one was video three, which I think the name just changed.
Ezra Firestone 00:40:07  we’re using 11 labs. you know, all the standard ones that you would know about. but for my own personal use, what I use mostly as ChatGPT and I mostly use it for writing support. that’s kind of my. I’m not like I was telling you before, I’m. I’m now navigating the ship. I’m not driving the car. I’m no longer doing anything other than thinking strategically and supporting my different teams and being, you know, kind of holding things together and working with folks and giving feedback. So I don’t do a lot of production, if you will. So I’m not actually engaging with that many tools.
Josh Hadley 00:40:41  Love it. Love it. Final question who’s somebody that you admire or respect the most in the e-commerce space that other people should be following and why?
Ezra Firestone 00:40:49  You know, this guy’s, So, by the way, Stone soup was written in 1947, and then it was rewritten in 1968 and reissued in 1986 when I was born. So I’m checking it out. It’s kind of fun, you know, people don’t.
Ezra Firestone 00:41:04  This guy’s not really an e-commerce. He’s an information marketing. He’s a life coach, business coach out of Australia called James Remco, and I think he just got and when I got into when I wanted to start an information publishing business back in 2012, I looked around at everybody who had info publishing businesses. I looked at digital marketer, I looked at James Remco, I looked at Joe Polish. I looked at, you know, Tony Robbins. I looked at Frank Kern, I looked at all the people who were sort of like established information publishers, and I looked at their business models. What are they selling? Who are they selling it to? What does it look like? And and I liked James’s model the best. And I actually joined his mastermind called Silver Circle for a few years from like 2012 to 2014, and he gave me feedback and guidance on how to build Smart Marketer, which is a really wonderful brand that I have today, which is morphed from information publishing, selling courses and digital content to actual services and doing agency services on behalf of brands, although we do still have content.
Ezra Firestone 00:42:00  But I just think he’s great. I think he has a lot of really wonderful things to say. I think he’s one of the oldest coaches in the game in terms of just been there through everything. I think he’s awesome.
Josh Hadley 00:42:10  Awesome. Fantastic recommendation. Well, Ezra, this has been a pleasure having you on the show. If people want to follow you, they want to learn more about you. Where can they reach out?
Ezra Firestone 00:42:20  I’m at Ezra Firestone on all the social media profiles. you know, so check me out on social Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, all that stuff. You can go to Smart Marketer, which is my blog. It’s run by my CEO and business partner, Molly Pittman, although I’m very much there and zip ify apps for Shopify apps that help you extend the functionality of your store.
Josh Hadley 00:42:41  Fantastic recommendations there on Shopify as well. Ezra, it’s been a pleasure. Thanks again for your time today.
Ezra Firestone 00:42:48  Rock and roll, man, I enjoyed it. Thank you so much.
Intro 00:42:51  Thank you for listening.
Intro 00:42:52  Visit ecomm breakthrough com for more information. If you’ve enjoyed today’s episode, the best way you can show your appreciation is by clicking the subscribe button and quickly leaving a review. See you again next time!